E-mail: n.nazeef@unsw.edu.au
Nazeef Nazeef
I am a full-time PhD candidate at the School of Physics, with Dr. Nichole Barry as my supervisor. I have a Bachelor's in Electronics and Communications along with a Master's in Physics from BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus, and I pursued my Master's thesis project at KTH Stockholm in the field of computational physics and nuclear astrophysics. My research interests and expertise lie in astrophysics, astro-particle physics, and radio astronomy.
Project:听Search Cosmic String wakes using MWA
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Search for radio signatures from Rubin-detected transients using MWA
Supervised by:听Dr Nichole Barry
Project description:听Several theories beyond the standard model have predicted the existence of early universe topological defects; one class of such a defect is cosmic strings. They are relativistic objects, which deformed the space around them. Their movement in the early universe plasma has created wedge-shaped overdensities of matter called cosmic string wakes, which would have a distinct imprint in the 21 cm observations at redshifts greater than reionization.
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) has been suggested as an ideal instrument to search for these non-Gaussian features in the early universe radio data, and I will be engaged in simulating, analysing, and developing tools to search for these cosmic entities.
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an optical telescope that is slated to detect millions of transients each night of observation. As a secondary objective, I will be performing follow-up observations on transients detected by Rubin to search for radio afterglow signatures. This will build a radio record of these transients, enabling us to probe explosion/shockwave evolution, progenitor physics, transient energetics, and statistics.